Watch 'vigilante' politician cruise Hawaiian streets with a SLEDGEHAMMER and smash up shopping carts to stop homeless people using them for their belongings

A Hawaii state representative has been waging a one-man war on homelessness - not with a groundbreaking new policy, but armed with a sledgehammer.

Seeking his own brand of 'justice', five-term House Democrat Tom Brower has been roaming the streets looking for homeless people so he can smash up their possessions.

Dressed in an Armani Exchange baseball cap and gloves, he has destroyed around 30 shopping trolleys over the last two weeks to prevent them from being pushed around by vagrants who use them to store their belongings.

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Crackdown: Hawaii state representative Tom Brower takes a sledgehammer to a shopping trolley in his war against homelessness

Hammertime: The House Democrat has destroyed around 30 shopping trolleys over the last two weeks to prevent them from being pushed around by vagrants who use them to store their belongings

'I got tired of telling people I'm trying to pass laws': Dressed in an Armani Exchange baseball cap and gloves, Brower has been meting out his own brand of justice across the state

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'I want to do something practical that will really clean up the streets,' he told Hawaii News Now.

Brower has also been turfing the homeless out of bus shelters during the day - yelling at them to 'get your ass moving' - but has decided to leave them be at night.

While his actions have attracted some sympathy in a state with the highest rate of homelessness in the United States, others have reacted furiously to his brand of vigilantism.

Cleaning up the streets: If Brower can identify where the carts came from, he returns them to the store

Tough sell: Brower tries to explains his actions to a homeless man who is one of 17,000 vagrants in the state

One angry caller told Hawaii News Now: 'What if I smash his car up with a sledgehammer "cause I don't like what I see?"'

Brower says he has now hung up his sledgehammer, admitting that the tool gave his campaign a 'really loaded image'.

But he wants the problem of shopping trolleys to be tackled and not become the 'staus quo'.

Lawmakers in Hawaii are known for taking a tough approach to homelessness in the state.

Instead of building more shelters or providing extra services, they recently approved a new $100,000 scheme offering the state's 17,000 homeless one-way flights off the islands over the next two years, reports Think Progress.